Sure, you can play often and hard and still lose. It’s even possible to play once, not do much, and win.
The probability of those outcome are vastly different.
Don’t play = 0% chance of winning.
Play once and don’t try hard = .000001% chance of winning.
Play hard and often = 15% chance of winning, with a 80% chance of coming in the top 10%.
*figures are made up, but logically realistic.
I was trying to be more general though. Forget money, think effort.
For almost $0 dollars there is a ton of opportunity out there. Let’s just take something we know, tech.
For effectively $0 you can learn everything there is to know about coding.
You could go to the library, get one book about html, and try being a web developer in two weeks. That’s probably not going to go well, but not because you’re unlucky.
Or, you could spend every waking moment consuming fundamentals of programming, read everything, forums, blog post, write tons of sample apps, contribute to open source and become a bad ass programmer. Chance of success is very high.
That is not about luck.